Look past Keanu Reeves' samurai sword in the film “47 Ronin” and you’ll see trees and shrubs grown in Oregon.

A Hollywood studio’s property department wanted traditional maples and ferns for a set depicting 18th-century Japan. California nurseries either didn’t grow the specific plants or didn’t have them large enough to appear as if they had been part of a formal Japanese garden for decades. So, Don Richards of Lake Oswego-based Applied Horticultural Consulting, Inc., stepped in with live props.

He found the needed Japanese maples, Japanese red pines, Japanese
umbrella pines, Japanese hydrangeas, oriental hellebores and Japanese
sword ferns at four Portland-area nurseries.

Oregon grows as many, if not more, Japanese maple varieties as in Japan, Richards says.

The plants were able to cross the border into California once Oregon Department of Agriculture nursery inspectors certified that the plants were pest and disease free, and met interstate regulations.

Even though the newly released movie, which reportedly cost as much as $225 million, is packed with the industry's finest special effects, real plants were preferred because they cost less that creating virtual ones and look better in high-definition filming than fakes made out of concrete or Styrofoam, says Richards, who has sourced plants for three other movies.

The real plants were filmed and then digitally replicated for scenes in Kyoto temples and Shogun strongholds.